We want to change our first encounter with the creative process and recognize we are the ultimate work of art, the true measure of original. Original has always been the foundation for any great work of art. Participating in the process is essential. Not to create more artists, or even art. But to learn to think more creatively. We need to be more imaginative, inspired in how we spend our days. It’s not enough to visit, listen to, watch or be entertained by the imagination. We need to be it, engaged in it. We can sing if we have a song, BE the song. We can be an author if we have something to say, something personal to us. A few words can become a theme that waits for us to personalize it in a multitude of ways.

Once engaged in the process, the results are original as we are. We are all a blank page. Filling that in involves struggle and thrills, the work of art. The results on a larger scale will be a new way to participate and contribute to what is around us, a new way to solve the problems we face. It will come from the bottom up, from the inside out, and cause us to look at progress and innovation in new ways.

In other words, Begin wants to turn the whole thing upside down and inside out.

There is a need that has not been met by any current means being offered. This is a fast pace world with only growing demands on our capacity to handle it, bringing an ever increasing amount of stress and feeling of emptiness. The creative process can lead to a healthier mental and emotional state of being.

What makes something creative?

The creative process has been around a long time. But what makes something creative? Our best explanation is a favorite quote of ours.

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song”.

The song part is a metaphor for a sense of passion and wonder. We believe they are where art first begins. It starts on the inside, grabs hold of us, and makes us do something with it. What comes out goes beyond anything we were trained for or learned to do. It is something personal of ourselves. If we really do have a song, we won’t settle. What comes out starts as a blank page in us and what we fill it in with won’t be a copy of something else. It will be as original as we are.